Trayvon: Killed For Walking While Black

Trayvon loved building models and taking things apart, his favorite subject was math, and he dreamed of becoming a pilot and an engineer. Instead, he was gunned down by a self-appointed neighborhood watch captain vigilante who profiled him, followed him, and shot him in the chest.

Every parent raising Black sons knows thedilemma: deciding how soon to have the talk. Choosing the words toexplain to your beautiful child that there are some people who willnever like or trust him just because of who he is—including some whoshould be there to protect him, but will instead have the power to hurthim. Training him how to walk, what to say, and how to act so he won’tseem like a threat. Teaching him that the burden of deflatingstereotypes and reassuring other people’s ignorance will always fall onhim, and while that isn’t fair, in some cases it may be the only way tokeep him safe and alive.

But sometimes it isn’t enough. It wasn’tenough to protect Trayvon Martin. Seventeen-year-old Trayvon’s Englishteacher said he was “an A and B student who majored in cheerfulness.”Trayvon loved building models and taking things apart, his favoritesubject was math, and he dreamed of becoming a pilot and an engineer.Instead, he was gunned down by a self-appointed neighborhood watchcaptain vigilante who profiled him, followed him, and shot him in thechest.

His killer, George Zimmerman, saw the teenager on the street andcalled the police to report he looked “like he’s up to no good.” At thetime Trayvon was walking home from the nearby 7-11 carrying a bottle ofArizona iced tea and a bag of Skittles for his younger stepbrother,leaving many people to guess that the main thing he was doing that madehim look “no good” was wearing a hooded sweatshirt in the rain andwalking while Black. George Zimmerman’s decisions made that suspiciousenough to be a death sentence.

Now there is widespread outrage over thesenseless killing of a young Black man who was doing nothing wrong andthe fact that the man who killed him has not been arrested. People aretrying to make sense of the series of gun laws that allowed GeorgeZimmerman to act as he did—starting with the Florida laws that allowedsomeone like Zimmerman, who had previously been charged for resistingarrest with violence and battery on a police officer, to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon in the first place. Many more questions arebeing raised about Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which also hasbeen described as the “shoot first, ask questions later” law, and givesthe benefit of the doubt to Zimmerman and others claiming “self-defense” by allowing people who say they are in imminent danger to defendthemselves. Some states limit this defense to people’s own homes, butothers, like Florida, allow it anywhere.

As Josh Horwitz, executive director of theCoalition to Stop Gun Violence, says, this law “has turned commonlaw—and common sense—on its head by enabling vigilantes to provokeconflicts, resolve them with deadly force, and avoid ever having to setfoot in a courtroom.” The fear in Trayvon’s death is that this isexactly what has happened so far: that the story told by witnesses,phone records, and Zimmerman’s violent past and earlier complaintsduring his neighborhood patrols shows an overzealous armed aggressor who followed Trayvon even after police told him to stop, chased Trayvondown when the frightened boy tried to walk away from the strangerfollowing him, and then shot the unarmed, 100-pounds-lighter teenagerwhile neighbors said they heard a child crying for help. The prospectnow that Zimmerman might never set foot in a courtroom for the shootinghas caused widespread frustration and fury.

Just as sadly, Trayvon’s death was not unique. In 2008 and 2009, 2,582 Black childrenand teens were killed by gunfire. Black children and teens were only 15 percent of the childpopulation, but 45 percent of the 5,740 child and teen gun deaths in those two years. Blackmales 15 to 19 years-old were eight times as likely as White males to be gun homicide victims.

The outcry over Trayvon’s death is absolutely right and just. We need the same sense of outrageover every one of these child deaths. Above all, we need a nation where these senseless deathsno longer happen. But we won’t get it until we have common-sense gun laws that protectchildren instead of guns and don’t allow people like George Zimmerman to take the law intotheir own hands.

We won’t get it until we have a culture that sees every child as a child of Godand sacred, instead of seeing some as expendable statistics, and others as threats and “no good”because of the color of their skin or because they chose to walk home wearing a hood in the rain.And we won’t get it until enough of us—parents and grandparents—stand up and tell ourpolitical leaders that the National Rifle Association should not be in charge of ourneighborhoods, streets, gun laws, and values. In Trayvon’s case, his father Tracy speaks forwhat his family needs: “The family is calling for justice. We don’t want our son’s death to be invain.” I hope that enough voices will ensure that it is not.